Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/189

Rh disclaiming its advocacy as improper, I had, since 1849, shown the absurdity of regarding suffrage as unwomanly, Having failed to secure her legal rights by reason of her disfranchisement, a woman must look to the ballot for self-protection. In this cautious way I proceeded, aware that not a house would be opened to me, did I demand the suffrage before convicting men of legal robbery, through woman's inability to defend herself.

The petition was referred to the Educational Committee of the House, whose chairman, editor of the Rutland Herald, was a bitter opponent, and I felt that he would, in his report, lampoon "Woman's Rights "and their most prominent advocates, thus sending his poison into all the towns ignorant of our objects, and strengthening the already repellant prejudices of the leading women at the capital. I wrote to Judge Thompson, editor of the Green Mountain Freeman (a recent accession to the press of the State and friendly to our cause), what I feared, and asked him to plead before the Committee and interest influential members to protect woman's cause against abuse before the House. He counseled with leading members of the three political parties — Whig, Free-Soil, and Democrat — including the Speaker of the House, and they advised, as the best course, that: "Mrs. Nichols come to Montpelier, and they would invite her, by a handsome vote, to speak to her petition before the House." "When," added Judge T., "you can use your privilege to present the whole subject of Woman's Rights. Come, and I will stick by you like a brother." I went. The resolution of invitation was adopted with a single dissenting vote, and that from the Chairman of the Educational Committee, who unwittingly made the vote unanimous by the unfortunate exclamation, "If the lady wants to make herself ridiculous, let her come and make herself as ridiculous as possible and as soon as possible, but I don't believe in this scramble for the breeches!"

In concluding my plea before the House (in which I had cited the statutes and decisions of courts, showing that the husband owned even the wife's clothing), I thanked the House for its resolution, and referred to the concluding remark of the Chairman of the Educational Committee, and said that though I "had earned the dress I wore, my husband owned it — not of his own will, but by a law adopted by bachelors and other women's husbands," and added: "I will not appeal to the gallantry of this House, but to its manliness, if such a taunt does not come with an ill grace from gentlemen who have legislated our skirts into their possession? And will it not be quite time enough for them to taunt us with being